Can you find the interesting things in this photo?
No, this isn't about drink driving in what appears to be a nice old car. There is a lot more to going on than just an old MG. Towards the left, way in the background are some lawn care professionals going about their daily grind with the usual complement of lawn equipment. While a weedwhacker and an MGC seem worlds apart, because they are, they share one thing in common: they don't do alcohol.
You see alcohol, like what the corn farmers are forcing down everyone's throat, is really bad for lots of engines, like those in lawn equipment and about any automobile over twenty years old and in most jurisdictions that means "any classic car." While some damage is done by the alcohol interacting with rubber components not suited to a drink most damage is ironically done by water that alcohol sucks right out of the air.
But ethanol is not just bad for the car, it kills people by pumping aldehydes into the air with a Stanford study suggesting a 9% increase in air pollution deaths if Los Angeles were to switch to E85. Sounds like a fair trade: increased profits for global agri-business for the low, low price of human lives.
Seriously, there must be some upside. Well, for every unit of energy required for corn-ahol you get 1.3 units out. Sounds good until you look at sugarcane with a balance of 8 or cellulosic ethanol with a projected balance of well into the double digits. What about carbon balance? That has to be good, right? Now that get's very complicated as there are a large number of variables needed to arrive at a total carbon footprint: feedstock, fermentation; refining; and transportation. Most models, already complex, ignore change in land use but research indicates that tilling new soil for ethanol production releases so much Green House Gas that it takes decades or centuries to recover even with the most optimistic estimates of GHG reduction.
And this is done with the assistance of Beltway Bandits to enrich already wealthy industrialists all on the public's tab with arrogant disregard for cost in human lives.
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| No Alcohol Allowed |
You see alcohol, like what the corn farmers are forcing down everyone's throat, is really bad for lots of engines, like those in lawn equipment and about any automobile over twenty years old and in most jurisdictions that means "any classic car." While some damage is done by the alcohol interacting with rubber components not suited to a drink most damage is ironically done by water that alcohol sucks right out of the air.
But ethanol is not just bad for the car, it kills people by pumping aldehydes into the air with a Stanford study suggesting a 9% increase in air pollution deaths if Los Angeles were to switch to E85. Sounds like a fair trade: increased profits for global agri-business for the low, low price of human lives.
Seriously, there must be some upside. Well, for every unit of energy required for corn-ahol you get 1.3 units out. Sounds good until you look at sugarcane with a balance of 8 or cellulosic ethanol with a projected balance of well into the double digits. What about carbon balance? That has to be good, right? Now that get's very complicated as there are a large number of variables needed to arrive at a total carbon footprint: feedstock, fermentation; refining; and transportation. Most models, already complex, ignore change in land use but research indicates that tilling new soil for ethanol production releases so much Green House Gas that it takes decades or centuries to recover even with the most optimistic estimates of GHG reduction.
And this is done with the assistance of Beltway Bandits to enrich already wealthy industrialists all on the public's tab with arrogant disregard for cost in human lives.
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